


The Great Sargasso Sea

by herdzofterdz



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Across time, Anxiety, Arranged Marriage, Biology, Bromance, Corpses, Crossdressing, Crossdressing Molly, Death, Depression, Disease, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Einstein was wrong, Eurus ships Sherlolly, Everybody is mentally ill, F/M, Friendship, Inspired by the Abominable Bride, Marriage, Medical schools, Mentally ill Sherlock, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Sexual Harassment, Sherlock is cray, Sherlock-John asexual love, Sherlolly - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Surgeons, The Woman doesn't mess it up either, Time is relative, Victorian Sherlock Holmes, across dimensions, drug, incestuous attractions, marital dealings, modern sherlock holmes, mollock, one-sided, the answer is love, warnings in notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-02-03 13:28:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12749250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herdzofterdz/pseuds/herdzofterdz
Summary: Sherlock is a man caught between two centuries. His eyes close in the 21st century only to open in the 19th, where he sees the same faces and hears the same names. Yet one person seems more constant than anyone else. In one time she's just his pathologist. In the other, she's his wife.





	1. Mrs. Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a loosely played hand here.
> 
> Rating may change. 
> 
> Any additional warnings will come with the chapter.

Mrs. Holmes wasn’t a good person. 

She was intelligent, imposing, a woman who carried weight in every word and authority in her footsteps, but she wasn’t good. 

In her life, she hadn’t had time for good. There were elections to check and corporations to commandeer. She had the circles of high society-litters of politicians and nobility and the moneyed-as her menagerie. That was what absorbed her adult years-all the years she’d had left; drained them. 

Her life was thus until the day she’d heard Doctor Hammond pronounce her sentence as the church bells announced midday. 

“Diabetes Mellitus” was the name of the scythe her reaper readied. She had months to get her affairs in order. She spent the first in bitter shock and refusing the continuous calls of new presbyter. 

The second found her in dread of the darkness coming. Only the hollow halls of the local church kept the vultures at bay. 

In the third, a rare shaft of light penetrated her self-absorption, courtesy of the hours reconciling with God and His Book. What sort of legacy would she leave this earth? What was she going to leave for her children? 

For hours she poured over deeds and dealings bearing her late husband’s signature. Three children meant three stacks of paper on the hard wood desk. 

Mycroft would be well-situated with his wife and the main estate, as he ever-entrenched himself in the Crown’s affairs. 

Now Eurus…Her poor defective Eurus-

The sole Holmes daughter was secured in a well furnished cell behind barred windows and stone walls. Mrs. Holmes could do little but allot a considerable sum to her child’s comfort. 

Her gaze turned to the last and smallest stack. Sherlock-

Here was her black sheep. Here was the child who’d squandered university on Chemistry and ran in the squalor of London just to feed his morbid obsessions and chemical addictions.

He thought her ignorant of his meddling with Scotland Yard and dalliances with cocaine. She knew about the syringes and corpses and “experiments” in make-shift labs in morgues.

Mycroft was the property of the state and six feet of limestone held Eurus, but Sherlock   
remained un-tethered, and she couldn’t leave the earth with him thus. 

He needed a home to contain him certainly. Musgrave would be adequate. He wouldn’t refuse the privacy and intrigue of that dark, haunting place outright. 

Employment…employment would be more challenging. After he’d refused everything from medicine to linguistics, Mrs. Holmes was hardly ready to reopen that can of worms. Well, no matter; money was not an issue and gentlemen were not absolutely obligated to attach themselves to a profession. 

In emotional attachment, Mrs. Holmes glimpsed a glimmer of hope.   
Even having hours consumed with her son’s emphatic proclamations that marriage dulled the senses and that the pleasures of the flesh could not tempt him, Mrs. Holmes could see her offspring well tamed by a woman. 

A wife could both hinder Sherlock’s addiction to self destruction and provide a physical outlet for his ardor. 

Well then, her mind was settled. 

Her death could not come before her son’s wedding day and she’d use every trick up her sleeve to bring this plan to fruition. She knew he’d resent her for it. She knew the last time she saw him he’d look at her with little but loathing. 

But she had to. She couldn’t die knowing that even in her last days she’d abandoned him to the cruelties of the world and of his own nature. He’d experienced a lifetime of that, of a mother who couldn’t bring herself to confess just how much she’d loved him.

She was the first woman to love him, and she was determined not to be the last.


	2. Adequate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft is nicer than he thinks.

Large eyes was the only physical attribute the young Molly Hooper had in her favor.  
Nothing in her thin figure or composure elevated Mycroft’s opinion of her beyond ‘adequate’, but ‘adequate’ was all that was necessary.

His mother was upstairs waning with the daylight, with only the satisfaction of the impending union of his little brother and this underwhelming creature to comfort her. And in Mycroft’s eyes, nothing short of war or famine was worth testing his mother’s recently feeble constitution. He would drag his younger sibling to the altar by the collar if necessary.

Luckily, this most recent engagement had finally found Sherlock in a less matricidal mood. Whereas the previous four had been Shakespearean exhibitions of Sherlock’s recalcitrance, wherein Sherlock had done everything in his power to leave his prospective brides in tears and disgrace. 

Well, perhaps his brother’s rigorous inquisitions had been somewhat merited. He’d been able to weed out two of the high society whores and that extortionist-Janine something or other (he really should keep in contact with her should a minor scandal be necessary to check some of the more radical parliament members). 

Although Mycroft would be more inclined to grant the boy forgiveness had Sherlock not indulged the manipulative affections of an American opera singer, Irene Adler. Luckily, big brother had been there to rescue him from the siren’s clutches, and Sherlock’s passion was doused by Adler’s sudden marriage to a wealthy Swede. 

Mycroft could almost thank Adler for nearly claiming his brother’s heart and body. Though no physical mistakes had been made, Sherlock had been made abruptly aware of his vulnerability to singular members of the fair sex-she'd stripped him of coherent thought with a glance and a whisper-and that loss of control had Sherlock reeling in fear.  
And by the will of heaven, that fear chased Sherlock into frightful submission to his mother's desperate pleas. 

He’d sullenly (but with far more dignity than all the previous attempts combined) assented to wedding his childhood playmate, Margaret Hooper. 

The girl was not remarkable in any evident way. She would not garner attention nor seek it. She would be content to dwell in the musty chambers of Musgrave miles from society. Most importantly of all, she seemed to have nigh endless patience with Sherlock, which was considerably more than any of the boy’s blood relatives could say.

In other words, Molly was truly perfect in the eyes of Mrs. Holmes. 

This fact found Mycroft waiting impatiently at the bottom of the stairs for his wife to emerge with his soon-to-be sister-in-law in tow. 

Anthea Holmes had been given the mandate to make Molly less of a trembling doe and more of a blushing bride. From what Mycroft could see of the small girl tentatively coming down the marble staircase, Anthea had largely succeeded. Anthea’s recipe of brisk exercise and cool baths had replaced sallow skin with a pink hue, and the diet of greens and fatty meat had filled in more of Molly’s face and figure. She did indeed look the part, bedecked in white and lace.

She looked the part in everything, except from the unmistakable glint of fear in her large eyes. The tension in the petite hands that held her dress, and the crease in her brow did not escape the eldest Holmes son. Hers was the more the face of a girl about to lose the head above her shoulders than the head between her thighs. 

She took the arm he offered (he felt the tautness of the muscles beneath her sleeve). She sat still and silent the whole ride to the cathedral (across from an equally silent couple). She let him escort her up the steps and into the narthex (her eyes were trained on her feet the whole ascent).

Somewhere, in a part of him he wouldn’t acknowledge existed, he wanted to say something to her. He didn’t know what, some inane placation no doubt. He wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry about, that his little brother would make an excellent husband, and that life as a Holmes was full of possibility and opportunity. But none of that escaped his lips. 

In some way, he was glad he could ignore the impulse to reassure her, for God had little patience for liars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thinking very short, but more frequent and numerous chapters are the way this thing is going to go =P


	3. Spooky Action at a Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock gets confused.

For all his preoccupation with details of the most inconspicuous variety, he failed to notice that 3B was missing from the shelf until he grabbed at thin air.   
The Bart’s pathology lab knew the unspoken rule that the microscope to the left of the cabinet’s exact center was the implied property of Sherlock Holmes, and no pathologist or lab tech had either the gall or long-suffering to use 3B. Its blatant absence was all the information he needed to know that St. Bartholomew’s hospital had a new pathologist on staff. 

The culprit had obviously not been social enough with her coworkers, because she was unabashedly fitting a new slide onto the stage without a single glance spared to her surroundings (which included the markedly tense man still at the cabinet).   
The carelessness with which she varied between the course and fine adjustments was nearly as grating at the sound of her rapidly rotating thru her slides; speed with little efficiency. 

If Johansson or Marcus had trespassed thus, he might have made his umbrage known. However, he had been a little too free with his emotional honestly as of late, and needed to reacquire some of the Bart’s staff’s good graces for his access to the lab to remain as extensive as it was.

The pathologist (her ID was somewhat lopsided) in the corner had likely just moved from her hospital of residence, as she could have just barely turned thirty.   
The colors and patterns beneath her lab coat were cheerful. Her face had smile lines and the slightest beginning of crow’s feet.   
Her hair was pulled back tight in a bright pink hair-band. Everything she wore was a size or three too big for her thin frame. 

This was someone entirely too earnest, too optimistic, and too socially-challenged for the world at large. 

Bart’s couldn’t have hired anyone better. 

He waited to approach her until she moved from bending over the microscope to bending over her clipboard. 

“I see you’ve recently joined us at Bart’s. I’m Sherlock Holmes”

She started at the sound of his voice, apparently not having heard or seen him the whole time he was in the lab. Her eyes were rather big, which made observing her initial surprise easy. They also betrayed her when she took the hand he offered. She found him attractive.

“Molly Hooper. Nice to meet you”

She returned in a low disused voice. 

“Are you still using this one?”

He inquired, gesturing to the violated microscope.

“Oh no, I’m done”

She seemed to stumble over herself in both moving her mouth and moving her hand to un-clip her slide from the stage. 

She was perfect.

“Thank you”

He made certain to smile a bit crookedly. A little asymmetry always looked more genuine. 

Her pale face colored slightly as she turned with her gloved hands full of clipboard and multi-colored pens.

The lab thankfully re-assumed its relative quiet as he focused on restoring the virtue of the oculars and diaphragm. The only sounds coming from her end of the lab were the rustling of paper, the clicking of pens, and the clinking of test tubes. 

She’d left the slides out. Nobody had replaced the pipettes.  
He pulled out the empty pipette tin and made his way to the cupboard, catching a glimpse of her straining to reach the Merck Index on the top shelf. 

“Excuse me”

He said, watching her startle again. So she was habitually oblivious-

He pulled the index down for her, somewhat aware of the degree of attention she paid to his back. 

“Thank you”

She said in a high tone. He watched her scurry away with the strangest feeling. 

The way she walked, that whispery tone, the way she was craning her neck over her papers was incredibly distinct.

Almost familiar-

He quickly exchanged the empty pipette tin for a full one and hurried to the autoclave to retrieve his plates. 

Some idiot had moved his plates from the right-most corner of the third rack. Perhaps it had been her.

The possibility of her second offense earned her an irritated glance at her back. 

A wisp of hair had somehow undone itself from her vise-tight band and was curling around her cheek.

Like a trick of the light, she was transposed to a dim room and bathed in a dusty sunbeam. Her fingers trembled at a cross-stitch, and he could see the jaw above her high white collar was clenched. 

"Do what you want."

She whispered.

"You always do." 

Sherlock blinked, and the pathologist was labeling a test tube in the sterile illumination of the hospital lab. 

Perhaps he should have worn two rather than three nicotine patches for a Thursday. 

He returned to 3B and opened his first plate. 

Resistant: S. saprophyticus; his most recent murder case, a teenage girl, had likely been sexually active, despite what her parents had claimed. 

He opened the second plate-a veritable Jackson Pollock painting-and claimed an amorphous yellowed colony on the edge. 

Whatever-her-name-was, Hooper, made her way back by him to grab a new slide from the box. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the crook of her neck and clavicle as she stretched her arm. 

Another vision invaded his mind, forced itself on his senses.   
He saw her head thrown back, and he felt her nails digging into his shoulders as she shuddered against him. 

The sound of glass breaking brought him back to the lab.  
He’d dropped his slide on the ground.

“Oh, whoops”

The pathologist nervously giggled. 

“I did that yesterday” 

She awkwardly consoled, spraying wescodyne over the contaminated shards. 

He watched her blankly for a few long moments before he was able to collect himself. 

“Yes, thank you’”

He said sharply, finding himself automatically turning off the microscope and re-sealing his plates.

He could finish this tomorrow.   
As for now, he needed a cigarette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm a Bio major, but I'm not 100% sure what a pathology lab in a hospital looks like. 
> 
> And my physics is rudimentary. 
> 
> Feel free to correct me on anything. =D


	4. Disparity of Cult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Molly go to premarital counseling. The priest is not impressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le WARNING: Christian theology discourses with smatterings of 19th century prejudices

Mrs. Holmes had spent most of her years Anglican only in name.

After her baptism, her father saw little point in forcing his family to attend church every Sunday, claiming the domestic church was as good a church as any.

Not until that fateful afternoon in the London home of the family physician had her thoughts dwelt on the mysteries beyond the grave. This separation of church and life was probably why she failed to see-even after reacquainting herself with her religion in the months preceding her death-why Molly Hooper’s Catholicism was a problem.

“The world is changing mother”,

Mycroft conceded to her,

“but not that quickly”.

“He’s gone thru four betrothals Mycroft”

she returned with all of her natural vigor,

“Four”

“We can stand a little inconvenience if it gives that boy a leash. I won’t have him joining me in my hearse. “

Mycroft could recall his mother changing her mind twice in his lifetime: after the death of her husband, and after the news of her own impending demise.

Changing her mind took the same amount of energy as changing the face of a glacier.

He said no more on the matter.

Instead he joined the family matriarch in entreating and threatening Sherlock into attending the premarital counseling required by Molly’s priest.

Mycroft had little doubt that his sibling would help Father James Arvel shave a few years off the priest's future purgatorial sentence (however that worked-Mycroft wasn’t Catholic for a reason).

Out of pity for the holy man, the eldest Holmes had insisted he join his brother and future sister-in-law in their little sessions, but Sherlock’s already fragile tolerance would not be pressed that far.

Mycroft had to be content with waiting outside the rectory with the dying petunias (for Sherlock was well aware if Mycroft was allowed within ten feet of the priest’s office, his big brother’s ear would never be far from the door).

Thus was Mycroft sat on a cold stone bench between the cold stone faces of Saints Peter and Paul with naught to entertain him but the corpses of yesterday’s roses, and his cigar.

******

If Farther Arvel had intended to instill a measure of confidence in either the prospective bride or groom, he was failing miserably.

His diluted blue eyes bulged out of a remarkably thin, triangular face, a countenance which oft gave his parishioners the feeling they were being scrutinized by a housefly.

A kind and pious man though he was, his social skills were considered deficient by the majority of his flock.

This personal failing was most likely the reason why he barely masked formidable reservations about the impending union of the mousy girl he’d baptized a mere nineteen years previous, and a youth he’d only ever heard to be an intellectual degenerate.

“Miss Hooper, before we begin, may I have a word with you in confidence?”

“Um,”

Molly whispered.

“No, she is not being forced.”

Sherlock announced.

“Mr. Holmes, I do not believe you can answer for Miss Hooper.”

The priest’s soft tenor was tight, both in indignation at the younger man’s incivility, and in embarrassment at being so quickly detected.

“But, but he is right. I’m not being forced,”

Molly tried to keep the squeak out of her voice, bent on placating the room.

Her spiritual shepherd was quiet a good long minute, looking thoroughly unconvinced.

But he had little choice but to take the bride-to-be at her word, to reconcile his body with the chair behind his desk, and to meet the eyes of Sherlock Holmes.

“Are you baptized Mr. Holmes?”

“I was baptized in the Anglican church as an infant.”

“Are you a practicing Anglican Mr. Holmes?”

“If you mean, do I go to a particular structure to praise a deity who does not need my praise, nor requires my existence at all, no.”

The priest slowly removed his spectacles, revealing the full glory of his bug-like gaze.

“What is your understanding of God, Mr. Holmes?”

The pastor said, staring at the folded spectacles in his hands.

Mr. Holmes seemed to respect that question enough to mull it over for a minute.

“I accept the Thomist concept of a Prime Mover, but the idea that an omnipotent, omniscient Being wants to involve Himself in our insignificant lives demonstrates considerable conceit on your part.”

The priest continued to stare at his spectacles, letting the silence grow thick in the air. The stiffness of his face and hands and repeated swallowing suggested that the pastor was making a valiant effort to control his temper.

“Mr. Holmes, God’s involvement with us…is not introduced by us. It is…we love Him because He loved us first.”

He cleared his throat, and rapidly continued.

“In a Catholic marriage, the man and woman exhibit the love between Christ and His Church, as well as the love between the members of the Holy Trinity. They demonstrate this physically, in their union and in procreation.”

Sherlock opened his mouth, but the priest wasn’t finished.

“Sexual intimacy is therefore the performance of this sacrament.”

Sherlock blinked and closed his mouth.

The priest tried not to smile. Ah, so this was what all this blustering was about- The poor boy was frightened. Frightened of intimacy of all things; Euripides, here be thy Hippolytus-

Well, charity demanded he allay the boy’s fears.  

“After you make your vows to each other with words on the altar, you make your vows to each other with your bodies in the marriage bed.”

Sherlock remained unresponsive (catatonic might be more accurate).

“You must be open to children, and you must not withhold yourselves from each other when no spiritual, charitable, or physical impediments exist. Because, Mr. Holmes”

Here the priest leaned forward on the great cherry wood desk, letting his fingers intertwine and his voice drop an octave, as though he were imparting the greatest secret in the cosmos.

“When you establish a covenant, it is between yourselves and God. You are the initiator, and God seals and sustains it.”

Sherlock seemed as though he was about to interrupt again, but the priest pretended he didn’t notice.

“Once the marriage is complete, your wife’s body is no longer her own. Her body is yours.”

Molly shifted a bit in her seat, her cheeks heating.

“And your body is no longer your own. Your body is hers.”

Molly was sure her whole body was red.

“Mutual slavery”

Sherlock declared.

“Mutual devotion”

The priest corrected.

“A covenant; do you know what a covenant means Mr. Holmes?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at the pastor’s condescending tone.

“I am most certain you’ll imminently inform me.”

“A marital covenant is a reflection of the divine, the immaterial, in the corporeal. It is a shadow of eternity, stitched in time.”

Sherlock rested his chin on his fist, sending the man opposite an indulgent smile.

“Eternity, Father? Timelessness contained within time?”

Father James Arvel was entirely determined to ignore the youth’s trap.

“The mirror of eternity, in your own beings; connected in both planes of existence“

“In soul and body”

Molly’s faint voice surprised both men in the room.

The priest graced her with a genuine smile.

“Exactly, Miss Hooper”

He returned his watery gaze to Sherlock, looking as though he aimed to address the boy’s very soul.

“And only death can part you.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Using a decade of theology courses for a fanfiction plot point-mother would be so proud-
> 
> Side note: Don't know why Moffat and Gatiss made Sherly atheistic in le modern adaption.  
> In the ACD works, Sherlock's religious views are much closer to Deism, similar to Albert Einstein's.


	5. Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is really really high and talks to stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: stuff about mental illness and drastic actions

If Sherlock had penned Dante’s Inferno, the deepest circle of Hell would have been for the liars: the hypocrites and deceivers and manipulators and seducers.

Those were the men he hated most. 

The thieves and murderers could all burn; the rapists and abusers be confined to the bottom of the sea by the millstones around their necks; but the liars should be damned to Satan’s bower. 

Why would anyone want to steep rationality in madness?

Why would anyone value their own little fairy tales over hard, electric reality?

Liars were thieves of knowledge, debauchers of existence.   
By telling a lie, one would rob another individual of knowledge, the most critical aspect of thinking, of being.   
One might as well pluck out eyes, or try to steal the sun. 

This world, as inflamed and corroded as it was, couldn’t stand any more liars. Even now, the earth shuddered under the weight of them all. 

Which was why Sherlock Holmes stood on the rooftop of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at 3 a.m. on a Monday morning, gazed intently at the street flickering between darkness and lamplight, and wondered for all the world why he hadn’t jumped for real-

He would have saved the world so much time.

He would have saved his friends so much heartache.

If he had rid the world of one more liar-

This was the great irony of his existence.

Mycroft thought he couldn’t see it. 

John probably did too. 

They all thought he didn’t know that he was an obscene, walking contradiction. 

Sherlock Holmes, the man who claimed himself espoused to reason-

The man who spoke truth like it was magic-

To him, the crime scene was like a magic trick, and most of the time, he was the only audience member who could see the strings behind the smoke and mirrors.  
This was his whole profession, to tear thru the screens of the criminal shadow play. 

What could he do, having found himself one of the actors, one of the shadows on the screen?

He’d masterminded his own shadow play. He’d learned to see the sleight of hand of the magicians, not because of some unnatural perspicacity, no, but because he was one of their fold. 

He’d been telling lies his whole life. He’d told them first to himself, weaving them with ever more polychromatic threads until they blended with his reality. 

He’d told himself he was a man of precision and reason. 

He’d told himself the cocaine was a mere distraction, to keep his mind from rusting. 

He’d told himself that he had a right, even a duty, to fight the serpents and dragons that coiled around their mounds of gold and nation states. 

Lies-

He’d wound the warp and thread the loom. He could never keep up the façade, not alone above the London cityscape. 

No deception could withstand the night and the silence. 

Here he was exposed. 

Here he could not hide that hollow helplessness behind dopamine and serotonin. 

Here he was the stupid, mad, slave to his senses.

Here he was the exact same as every single one of those apes ambling about on the pavement below-

No, no he was worse. 

Those drunks and meth heads stumbling around West Smithfield knew what they were, and aspired to be no greater. 

But he was the knave who thought himself a knight. He wore the armor so poorly he couldn’t understand how Britain couldn’t see the Don Quixote beneath the Sir Galahad. 

Well, John saw. 

Mrs. Hudson saw. 

Mycroft had always seen, and made it known that he’d seen. 

But he was too much of a coward to admit it to the world. Moriarty was right. There was no reason to believe in Sherlock Holmes. 

Well, if he couldn’t admit it to the world, he could admit it to the stars. Here were Aquarius and Pegasus to stand as witness. 

Perhaps if he got up on the ledge he could see the constellations more clearly. 

Yes, he could. 

He could feel the familiar openness behind his back, where there was nothing but air, nothing to catch him but concrete. 

“Falling is just like flying,”

He informed the stars.

“There’s just a more permanent destination.”

He inched his feet back until his heels ever so slightly hung over the edge. 

“I’ve done this before.”

The wind caught the ends of his coat. The bitter chill burned his lungs as he inhaled.

“I just need to do it right this time.”

A single step backwards and he’d tear thru the screen of this shadow play once and for all. 

No more lies-

The clouds above the horizon broke to fully unveil the moon.

How appropriate-

Exactly what he was about to do, tear the veil, reveal the light, here, caught between the glow of streetlamps and the moonlight, like two edges of the universe-

Ridding the world of one more hypocrite-

He could feel his knees tremble and hear his heart in his ears. 

And he could hear a faint, tinny, obnoxious buzzing near his leg.

Someone was calling him. 

Someone was calling his phone at 3 a.m. Monday morning as he stood on the line between the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital roof and eternity. 

Who the hell-

The moment ruined, he stepped down from the ledge and fished the android out of his coat pocket.

The name alight on the screen only furthered his confusion. 

For an instant, he considered throwing the phone over the side of the roof. Sort of a test flight; see where he might want to land the rest of him-

But something in him, something terribly close to the abject sense of emptiness that had ruled this night compelled him to press 'Accept'. 

He released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and held the phone up to his ear, doing his best to keep his voice even. 

"Molly?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is a one-man Shakespeare tragedy.
> 
> And he owns an android. 
> 
> According to me


	6. Performative Utterance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither Sherlock nor Molly are particularly keen on Sherlock's given name.

Molly Hooper was determined not to lie.

Life had never been particularly full of prospect for her.

She was the daughter of a well-known physician and the granddaughter of successful tea merchants, so her life was certainly better than most of the mortals in the British Empire.

But Molly wasn’t terribly good at blending into the cultural quilt into which she’d been sown.

She was a dotty little circle in rows of squares.

She had no eye for fashion (she relied on her stepmother’s opinion for what she’d wear).

She did not enjoy the stress and clutter of social events (continually having to have something to say was the most exhausting thing in the world).

She kept to the edges of rooms and the shortest of conversations, lest she make the wrong kind of joke or step on someone’s hem.

Even with all her caution, she was continually on the receiving end of blank stares or furrowed brows, never fully aware of what exactly she was doing wrong.

So when she could, she kept to her rooms, her father’s library, or the wide squares of land surrounding the house.

She rarely informed her stepmother of where she went. The three miles of English countryside outside her door were lacking in rapists and murderers, so her reticence was a non-issue.

A well-worn volume of _Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical_ and a flask of water would accompany her to her beloved aspen grove, or to St. Peregrine’s Catholic Cemetery a mile north.

Among the trees and among the dead, she was free of correction and critique.

In those long silent hours was the joy of living distilled.

But only in those hours-

“William and Margaret, have you come here to enter into marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?”

No, she hadn’t much prospect in life.

Not many men in her stepmother’s social circles would consider her much of catch.

She didn’t have the right body, the right brain, or the right heart to wear the ring of the common gentleman.

“ _Molly dear, if I may be direct, you aren’t likely to find another man of our station to take you.”_

Her stepmother had looked at her with such sensitivity mingled with rare severity.

“ _I understand he possesses many, less-than-ideal qualities, but he might be your only chance. Your father did not leave us with endless wealth.”_

In other words, to refuse this opportunity would be unforgivably ungrateful of her.

_“I can’t force you Molly”_

_“You won’t have to force me. I understand. I do.”_

Mrs. Hooper looked remarkably youthful when she smiled and pulled her daughter into her arms.

She wasn't lying. Nobody forced her. Molly simply had sense enough to look at her predicament thru her mother’s eyes, and saw that Mrs. Hooper was right.

“I have."

Molly didn’t know why the unison of their voices surprised her.

She supposed she’d half expected Sherlock to storm off the altar, incapable of complying with this charade any further.

But he remained beside her, his gaze trained on Father Arvel with something terribly reminiscent of full and conscious resolve.

As though he meant it-

“Are you prepared to love and honor each other as long as you both live?”

She hardly knew whether she was capable of that level of devotion.

And to imagine Sherlock doing anything further than tolerating her presence was equally beyond her perception of reality.

_“That’s part of the meaning of marriage Miss Hooper.”_

The priest’s hand was very cold when he’d rested it on hers in his attempt to comfort her.

_“You aren’t relying on yourselves to be good. You’re relying on God to make you good.”_

Then God surely had His work cut out for Him.

“I am”

Again she was surprised to hear Sherlock’s timbre meld with her own.

“Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church?”

In their weekly sessions, the priest had given lengthy expositions on the procreative purpose of marriage to her timid stare and Sherlock’s silent, expressionless endurance.

In all these months of preparation, she hadn’t truly considered the more than theoretical possibility of any human souls resulting from their union.

She surmised this was because she could barely fathom Sherlock touching her of his own volition, much less fathering her children.

She’d been privy to one of his impassioned diatribes on the mindless conceit of human reproduction.

_“Do pardon me if I don’t display that inimical human frenzy to immortalize our own pathetic selves. We’d do better to spare the universe some suffering, and castrate the lot of those rutting beasts.”_

He’d been particularly enthusiastic that day, railing just as much against mankind at large as against his own situation (which, according to him, was being treated as _“no better than a stud horse”_ ).

_“You always did have such a flair for the dramatic, little brother.”_

Mycroft said behind the curtain of the _Manchester Guardian_.

Perhaps the incense had an uncommon effect on the youngest Holmes son, because he barely hesitated in joining her once more.

“I am”

The priest looked almost relieved.

“Since it is your intention to enter into the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.”

Molly was sure her whole body was shaking when she took the hand of the man opposite her.

Slowly, holding her breath, she forced herself to look him in the eyes.

Not a hint of derision to be found; nor were they clouded with tedium…

“I, Sherlock,”

“William”

The priest whispered.

Sherlock’s face tensed just slightly, as though mentally rebuking his mother for saddling him with a first name so ordinary.

“I, William,”

Each syllable of the name emphasized-

“Take you, Margaret, to be my wife.”

Her heart forgot its rhythm for a moment.

“I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.”

The church seemed to be getting darker all of a sudden.

“I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

She tried to remember how breathing went.

Was it in-out or out-in?

“Molly”

What?

Molly looked at the priest and then back to Sherlock.

Why were they staring at her like that?

Oh…

“I”

She tried not to choke on her own air.

“I, Margaret, take you, Sherlock”

“William”

“Take you, William, to be my husband.”

Yes, she was looking him directly in the eyes. Good-

“I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health,”

She wasn't lying. She would. She really would, as much as someone like her could.

“To…to love and to honor you”

And here was the final seal on her fate.

“All the days of my life”

For all his past reservation, here in the dim candle light the priest’s smile was jubilant.

“What God has joined together, let not man put asunder”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I took quick pop personality tests as Molly and Sherlock to get me in the mood for writing fanfic. 
> 
> I got INTJ for Sherlock and INFP for Molly. 
> 
> Sound about right?


	7. Very Good Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes have never been couth, much to Mycroft's dismay and Sherlock's undoing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Some historical liberties, misogyny, and sexual language.

 

 

 

 

The mycelium of the Holmes family had produced something of a fairy ring in European soul.

Blood history was obfuscated by centuries of eccentricity and mental ailment and human nature, leaving the consanguinity of most of the bodies crowding the nocturnal wedding reception deeply in question.

However, whether they were actually genetically close mattered little in the shadow of their familial enthusiasm; uncles and aunts and cousins ten-a-penny descended upon the newly minted Holmes breeding pair.

Propriety could not loiter long in the home of the always progressive Mrs. Holmes, a fact which tugged at the stitching of Mycroft’s embroidered smile.

 Yet his torment did not compare to his little brother’s (a fact which greatly pleased him).

Sherlock Holmes was reluctantly compelled-by the strained breathing and trembling limbs of the old woman upstairs-to withstand the barrage of ‘congratulations’, hand-clasping, and shoulder-clapping of his overenthusiastic kinfolk.

No greater mercy was granted him than the chamber orchestra recreating the prelude of Bach’s first Cello Suite in G Major, which seemed to create a break in the tide.

Few minutes were needed for the majority of hands to be occupied with coupes of champagne and glasses of spiced wine.

It took a few more minutes for Sherlock’s ears to stop ringing and his heartbeat to slow. There was hardly enough air to share with all these candles burning and bodies breathing.

“Excuse me Molly”

He said abruptly, making as to flee the hall for the dark adjoining corridor.

“Sherlock, you are to stay put-“

Mycroft began, blocking his exit in one rapid step.

“At the present, I fear nature has a greater command over my faculties than you do, brother dear”

Sherlock said, bypassing his sibling.

Mycroft’s jaw locked, but the sight of his wife approaching and the forlorn figure of his new sister-in-law stopped him from chasing after Sherlock.

He knew full well that “nature” had less to do with Sherlock’s bladder and everything to do with the cigar in his brother’s pocket.

Mycroft couldn’t stop the clenching of his fists even as his wife took his arm.

Even now, in their parent’s sunset days, Sherlock was just as self-absorbed and weak-willed as ever.

Their mother had always been far too liberal with her youngest son, and they were now reaping the ergot with the rye.

How could she expect to grow a man out of this petulant child?

“Nephew!”

Apparently Uncle Rudy was blind to his nephew’s consternation-or Mycroft’s face was fortunately a fair façade for the turbulence of his mind-as the older man seemed determined to weather the throngs of guests to reach him.

“Nephew”

His uncle greeted him with large teeth beneath a tar black mustache, wine sloshing in his glass as he reached for his nephew’s free hand.

“You look well as ever Uncle”

Mycroft did his best to soften his features and display his most accommodating smile.

“Yes, lovely, lovely. You’re balding my boy. But your wife is aging far better than you, lucky chap.”

Anthea seemed to be all tolerance and smiles as her uncle-in-law kissed the back of her gloved hand.

“And is this the new addition to the family?”

Uncle Rudy turned his attention to an unsuspecting Molly. She tried to reflect the warmth of her in-laws, but her nervousness would not depart her eyes and hands.

Her inability to read Uncle Rudy’s expression before he kissed her hand helped nothing.

“She makes a pretty young bride, doesn’t she? Certainly better than Sherlock deserves”

He laughed as he returned his gaze to Mycroft.

“Where is the boy?”

Mycroft stopped a sigh from escaping.

“Ah, yes, Uncle”

Mycroft paused for a second, a new light blooming in his eyes.

He separated from his wife and directed his uncle off to the side of the room.

“I’m afraid, Uncle”

His whisper jocular and conspiratorial,

“My poor brother has quit the room on account of nerves.”

“Nerves you say?”

“Yes, he’s never been terribly comfortable with people, but even the most socialized gentleman is bound to be nervous on his wedding night.”

Comprehension pulled the older man’s features into a knowing grin.

“Needs a bit of reassurance?”

“Any sort of wisdom you can give, Uncle. I’m afraid he wouldn’t accept any of my advice, but I’m certain he’d listen to you.”

“Not to worry my boy”

Uncle Rudy gripped Mycroft’s shoulder in consolation.

“I’ll gather some of the lads and we’ll have a little chat with him.”

“Thank you Uncle”

>>>>> 

Sherlock found the combination of the cold night air and the cigar to be the cure for his tachycardia.

He pointedly stood outside one of the corners of the house where no one at the windows could spot him on the terrace beneath the stars. He’d thought about disappearing completely into the hedges, but he found these last few months had drained a little of his old attitude.

With his mother wearing on him and that priest’s attempt at indoctrinating him and Mycroft’s constant threats, he wasn’t sure how much energy he had to keep up resistance.

It was all so tedious…

He took another breath of nicotine, watching the embers fall and trace the stone railing in the low breeze.

He was obliged to go back in at some point to retrieve his…Molly.

But he needed just a few minutes where the only clutter was in the sky.

How humanity could stand to climb all over each other like nest of roaches…

This, this marriage thing might not be as terrible as it seemed.

Molly didn’t hang on his arm or hover at his side like the others before her had tried.

She hadn’t expressed much desire to involve herself in his life at all, actually.

After their obligatory meetings at St. Peregrine’s, she had always removed herself from his presence with hardly a word.

She was well-occupied with her own thoughts and books.

And their long history together meant she had little need to inquire after his interests and opinions.

Their childhood association had schooled her well on his nature. She knew well that he preferred his freedom and solitude.

There was nothing to say.

Nothing at all-

“Sherlock!”

Shit-

 “Sherlock, my boy!”

Lord have mercy…

A cluster of male voices began a dissonant chorus of his name, revealing the astounding speed with which the wine had permeated the wedding party. Even now he could hear it spilling on the terrace as the gaggle of less-than-sober uncles rapidly cornered him.

“Ah good, you already have a cigar”

The head of this hunting party, a particularly unstable Uncle Rudy, emerged from the throng and gripped his nephew’s empty hand.

“Here’s the rest of the recipe for restoring your courage”

He announced as he curled Sherlock’s fingers around a wine glass.

“Drink up boy. We’ve come to your aid.”

Eight men surrounded him, pinning him against the railing.

The grass was nearly ten feet below him, and it wasn’t a thick enough lawn to preserve his ankles should he jump. The hedge maze was nearly thirty feet from the wall.

Were they drunk enough to outrun with traumatized joints?

“We’ve heard about your little situation, and we want to assure you, it’s perfectly normal.”

Throwing the wine in their eyes would probably do little to alleviate the situation. He might escape to the maze, but he’d just be buying hell for himself later between his mother and brother.

“Women are a mystery old as man, and you were never the most, socialized.”

Uncle Rudy’s arm was very abruptly about Sherlock’s shoulders, and the man’s grip was testament to his horse-taming years and military service.

“You can’t get too excited right off. You won’t make it all the way thru, and I can assure you she won’t be pleased with that.”

Uncle Matthew flanked Sherlock’s other side, gifting the night air with the full brunt of his drinking habits.

“You really have to work them up. They aren’t like us. A lot of skin and a lot of touch”

“Yes, you have to use your hands a lot”

“Especially in the pelvic area-“

Uncle Victor’s sagacity was interrupted by a coughing fit. The glut of the cloud was caught by his red kerchief.

“But don’t just shove your fingers in her, boy”

“You must sort of activate those natural pelvic fluids before-“

“And there are many uses of one’s tongue”

Uncle James said over his wine, adjusting his spectacles.

“You know you’re doing it right when she gets red and her breathing changes”

“A little bit of light is necessary”

“Mine screams”

“I would too, if I had to see you naked”

 “Wives need to be well satisfied else they’re prone to mental maladies”

"They're like cats"

"Hysteria is epidemic among virgins"

“That’s because women are more in touch with their animal nature than men are.”

“Adam was given charge of Eve for a reason after all.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen”

The volley was stayed by the voice of a subtly smug Mycroft Holmes (the rigidity of Sherlock’s frame and his blank-eye stare were quite telling of his mental state).

“I’m afraid I must steal your nephew away for now. Mrs. Holmes requires his presence”

A sudden sobriety overcame the group and they rapidly released Sherlock.

“She’s asked for us. Do everything you can to not be yourself.”

Mycroft said, smile only half-faded.

Sherlock nodded vaguely, quite eager to accept any thought that would pry the image of a gasping and flushed Molly Holmes from his traitorous mind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, I know most Victorian weddings weren't nocturnal (unless they were like, royal).  
> Noon weddings were common amongst commoners, with a wedding breakfast and such-
> 
> And I know the hysteria thing is fuzzy historically buuuuut this is fanfiction. =P


	8. One of the Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new Mrs. Holmes has a little chat with Mrs. Holmes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Discussion of ends; mentions of 19th century abortion practices, and weird understanding of sex

The gas lamps were turned down low, enough for the contents of the room to be mostly shadows. 

Molly could barely distinguish between the floor and the furniture as Anthea ushered her in. 

Anthea closed the door, permitting only the slightest click to sound, before she made her way to the bed on the far end of the chamber.

“Mrs. Holmes, I’ve brought Molly here to see you as you asked.”

“Thank you Anthea”

A weak female voice sounded from the heap of white sheets on the bed. 

“You may leave. Don’t let anyone else enter until I say.”

Anthea nodded in assent-despite the fact that Mrs. Holmes was not at the angle to see her properly-and departed the room, leaving a bewildered Molly still by the door. 

“Come, come here”

Mrs. Holmes commanded in a whisper.

Molly forced her legs to carefully tread the distance to the canopy, keeping her hands out by her waist to make certain her path was clear. 

The older woman slowly wriggled out of her sheets and sat up against her pillow to see Molly better.

“Here girl, sit on the bed here. Let me see you.”

Molly did as she was told, holding aside her veil to sit by the thin, covered legs of her mother-in-law.

“Better”

The older woman said, taking a moment to study her new daughter. 

“You make him an excellent wife”

She stated as if this were scientific fact (and perhaps it was in Mrs. Holmes’ mind). 

“No matter what Mycroft says”

She reached an emaciated hand towards her bed stand to retrieve a cigar from its box. 

She put it in her mouth and gestured for Molly to get the box of matches below the basin on the same table.

Molly took a few tries to light one. 

She tentatively held the flame to the end of the cigar in the dying woman’s mouth. 

So some of Sherlock’s bad habits were hereditary…

The old woman waited until Molly put down the matches before she feebly took the girl’s wrist in her chilled hands. 

“I called you here now because there’s not much time, and there are things I mean to tell you.”

She said, voice a bit muffled by the cigar. 

Molly nodded as though she understood, but questions seized her mind. 

Not much time?

For Mrs. Holmes or for Molly?

Molly swallowed hard.

Either option suggested death or sex was about to enter the discussion, and Molly was prepared to hear of neither. 

“Mrs. Holmes”

She attempted to rescue the conversation and her sensibilities, but her Mother-in-law was little concerned for the latter. 

“No, listen. I’m the one dying here.”

Molly cowed immediately under the sudden strength of the other woman’s voice. 

“You are in a most unfortunate position.”

Mrs. Holmes went on as authoritatively as she could while slumped against a pillow.

“My son is, I admit, not at all an ideal husband”

Molly was able to stop herself from nodding. 

“But I am convinced-and by virtue of having birthed him, I have the capacity to say this-that he will be different to you”

Molly wasn’t able to stop the confusion from redirecting her features. 

“I know you don’t believe me. The fact remains, under all that bluster, my son is a very emotional, idealistic-I’d say, passionate man”

Passionate…

“And though he claims otherwise, I know that passion could be channeled correctly should it have a clear object”

It had a clear object. Chemistry, crime, detective work, experimentation, his apparent desire to add bullets to the insulation…

“Even cerebral men need physical outlets.”

Molly was not terribly pleased with the direction she was taking with this.  
“Heaven knows, it’d do you a world of good too. Your fragile nerves are clear signs of repressed natural physicality.”

Molly had little idea of how to answer or counter such a claim, medically unfounded and psychologically dubious as it was. 

The cloud of smoke caught in the folds of the canopy made the room even darker.

“But I must tell you something child.”

The old woman’s voice was getting thinner.

“I feel as though this is my last opportunity to say it.”

The withered hand holding Molly’s fingers clenched with surprising residual strength.

“You must keep this in your confidence. I planned to take this to my grave, where it could cause no one pain, but-“

And Mrs. Holmes’ voice was strained.

“I cannot seem to die without confessing my sin-“

Molly could hardly see her mother-in-law’s face anymore, but the air was just as cluttered with pain as it was smoke. 

“You Catholics understand the need for confession, don’t you? Last Rites…”

“Would, would you like me to send for a priest, or a minister?”

“I don’t think you have time.”

Her voice was so thick. Was she crying?

Oh God, God in Heaven, what was she supposed to do?

“I , I could try. Let me run-“

“No, no-please don’t leave me alone”

She was most definitely crying now, and her grip on Molly was too desperate, and Molly’s heart was too empathetic.

“I won’t. I’m here.”

Molly clasped both the older woman’s hands to her abdomen, scrambling for some way to pacify the anxiety that was drowning her new mother in waves.

“Then listen to me. Please listen-“

“I’m listening.”

“Don’t tell”

“No, not anyone”

A small sob was muffled in the pillow. 

Molly abruptly wondered where the cigar had gone. Was it rolling in the bed sheets, ready to ignite the room and take Molly as well as Mrs. Holmes?

“I, I tried to get rid-“

Molly removed her left hand from her mother’s and carefully prodded the sheets in search of the cigar.

“I didn’t want the child.”

Molly paused.

“I, I just didn’t want another one so soon. I was tired from the last one. And he, he wasn’t home, so I”

The prone woman shivered.

“I tried with all those stupid concoctions first, but-“

She exhaled shakily. 

“I went to Doctor Hammond. He said to come in from the alley. I was, I was on the steps, about to go in,”

Molly didn’t know whose heart was beating so loudly.

"I...just...couldn't"

Another sob-

“I didn’t”

Mrs. Holmes’ hand was relaxing, unconsciously or involuntarily.

“But I tried. I tried all those damned physics”

Molly felt a weight in her chest. Which physics? 

“They ruined my child. I know they did”

“Which, which did you take?”

“I’m responsible for that miserable, miserable monster-“

“M-Mrs. Holmes, what did you ingest?”

“I ruined-“

Her breathing became quickly labored, and for several moments the woman couldn’t speak. 

“I’ll get the doctor”

Molly said.

“and I can’t blame”

A gasp hid the name from Molly’s ears. Perhaps the name itself had sounded like a gasp.

“Hating me”

Molly removed herself from the bed, which was no longer difficult as Mrs. Holmes’ limbs were limp and cold like she was dying from the outside in. 

She gathered her white skirts and ran as fast as she could in the darkness. 

She jerked the door open in time to greet the bemused faces of both Holmes sons, who had seemingly been having a silent but enthusiastic argument in the hallway. 

“She’s- I think she’s dying”

The two men ran into the room, nearly knocking Molly to the floor.

“Mother”

Mycroft’s anxiety took on an authoritative tone, as if he were scolding her for doing something as silly as dying at her son’s wedding.

“Sherlock”

The woman on the bed wheezed.

“Yes Mother”

“Sherlock”

She said again, but after that no one could hear her breathing. 

Molly made her way to the side of the bed, moving around the two stunned men with a sudden and eerie confidence. 

She held the old woman’s wrist. 

She put two fingers beneath the jaw. 

She pressed an ear to the sternum. 

She held one of the few candles in the room to the woman’s face, illuminating parted silent lips and eyes wide open. 

The vibrant blue had already faded from the irises. 

“I believe she is dead”

Molly said softly. 

“We’ll need the doctor to confirm this”

Mycroft said. Though his tone challenged her statement, she could see in the candlelight that his eyes believed her. 

She turned back to the corpse, feeling Sherlock’s rooted frame behind her. She didn’t want to look at him just in case he didn’t want her to. 

She glanced at the floor instead. 

On the floor beneath the bed, she finally found the extinguished remains of the cigar, the end already crumbling into ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the stuff in the chapter is based off stuff in my own family.
> 
> What I'm saying is: people are weird.


	9. Red threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly finds she disappoints herself on many levels.

She was supposed to be at Bart’s at 7:30 tomorrow, or rather today, but she remained at the breakfast table, her eyes regularly flipping focus between the dark screen of her phone and the clock on the stove. 

2:50 blinked on and off, on and off, counting the seconds until 2:51.

She needed to be in bed. 

It wasn’t that far to her bedroom, or even the sofa. She’d leave her dental libations for the morning.

She couldn’t trust herself with only four hours of sleep. Medical school had taught her that much. 

All she had to do was stand up and walk the ten feet into her room. 

That was all. 

2:52

Her phone screen was still black as the night outside her window. 

He wasn’t going to text her. 

He didn’t text her all that often anyway.

And she’d done enough of getting up at all hours to accommodate his whims. 

That man-child was just going to have to learn to wait, or procure his own corpses (and the latter she wouldn’t truly put past him).

But he wasn’t even texting her. 

See, she just checked.

Nothing-

Why was she still here?

“Go to bed Molly”

She told herself, again. 

“It’s Monday anyway. Only so much coffee can help that”

She reminded herself. 

It was splendid advice really. 

She was a very practical person at her core. 

She would most certainly indulge her pragmatic side. 

If he would only text her to say he didn’t need anything…

Molly snorted, or laughed, both-

She gazed into the full length mirror adjacent to the doorway.

“Why are you always this pathetic?”

She asked the woman in the mirror.

“Do you enjoy it?”

The woman looked back at her with dark circles beneath the eyes and a tense, thin mouth caught in a wry smile.

“Well apparently you do”

She informed the poor girl in the mirror. 

“You got rid of a perfectly decent man”

She told the stupid woman who had broken off her engagement a few months previous. 

“He was perfectly adequate. You would have been as happy as expected.”

The woman was almost glaring at her.

“You would have been happier that you are now at least.”

Molly was not to be deterred. 

This talk was necessary, a long time coming. 

“Yet here you are, miserable and alone, wasting the whole damn night away on someone who barely remembers you exist”

The smile on the woman’s face was barely a smile.

“Go to bed”

3:01

“Now”

3:04

“He’s fine”

3:07

She looked at her phone again. 

Nothing-

Of course there was nothing. 

There was no reason there should be something. 

“He doesn’t need you”

3:10

“And you certainly don’t need him”

3:15

“You shouldn’t have given up Tom for him”

3:17

“You know that’s why you broke it off. There wasn’t any good reason”

3:21

“Stop pretending you’re not this pathetic. You’re a horrible liar”

3:25

“He just wasn’t, just wasn’t Sherlock. That’s the only reason you-“

3:29

The phone screen hadn’t lit once, and she still wasn’t in bed. 

She managed to stand.

Yes, that was good. 

Left foot, then the right, let’s go-

Her legs stubbornly ignored her commands. 

She should just cancel her phone at this rate.

It might do her good to get off the grid.

It wasn’t like she had scores of people trying to call her anyway. She could learn to use the land lines and payphones. 

Maybe…

Maybe he wasn’t fine. 

Maybe she was thinking about him for a reason. 

Maybe there really was a spiritual dimension to the human person, and maybe people really could sense things in their souls. 

Sense other souls…the pain of other souls…

Perhaps that’s why she couldn’t bring herself to sleep.

Perhaps he actually did need her. 

He’d needed her before, when he thought he was going to die.

She’d sensed his pain then. 

And his pain had been so raw, so visceral. 

Perhaps he did need…

She picked up her phone once more. 

No, this is stupid.

She unlocked it. 

Don’t be stupid, Molly.   
You’ve worked too hard doing the opposite. What were all those student loans for?

She pulled up her contacts. 

The human soul was immaterial. As such, it couldn’t be observed.

S-

In order to be subject to science, it had to foster a hypothesis testable and falsifiable by empirical methods. 

Her thumb hovered over his name. 

But one can’t see the human soul.

One could only feel it.

How inconvenient that is. 

How difficult to justify-

But how stupidly compelling-

Oh shit, had she meant to hit 'call'?

The wise thing would be to hang up, not hold the phone to her ear. 

What was she going to say to him anyway?

That she’d felt a disturbance in The Force?

Was his refrigerator running?

She should have felt more shame at chuckling at that.

He probably wasn’t going to answer anyway.

Her stomach clenched when she heard him pick up. 

A long silence ensued, giving her insides time enough to tie themselves into a Gordian knot. 

“Molly?”

Shit-

“Sh-Sherlock”

“Speaking”

Molly’s eyes automatically narrowed. 

Ass-

“What are you doing?”

Idiot, she should have just asked about his refrigerator. 

“I-what are you doing calling me at 3 in the morning Molly? Don’t you go in at 7?”

Of course he knew her schedule. He probably knew it better than she did. Such knowledge had hardly made him respectful of her time in the past. 

“7:30”

She replied, as if that half hour made all the difference. 

“My question remains”

But she didn’t have an answer, not one she could well explain. 

“I, I thought you were, you might-“

No, shut up Molly. Just hang up.

“Need something”

Masochism doesn’t suit you, Molly. 

“What, what could I need-“

“From me?”

Molly interrupted, the echoes of a long-buried conversation in a dim lab eclipsing her hesitation. 

Apparently he did remember the first time she had the tenacity to offer her aid, because her response left him quiet for a long moment.

“Actually”

He began.

“I might need something.”

He said slowly.

“What?”

She was nearly whispering. 

His breathing was a little different, like he was consciously tempering the rate of his respiration.

In that little detail lurked that familiar pain. 

The hurt that had flickered in his eyes when he thought no one saw him-

Unrelentingly palpable-

“Tell me”

She said with a firmness foreign to her vocal cords. 

“I”

She prayed he wouldn’t hang up. 

“Coffee”

Molly blinked. 

“What?”

“I need coffee Molly. It’s been a long night.”

“No-“

“You’ll need it too now that they’ve switched your shifts this month.”

“I don’t think-“

“Your place?”

“No, Sherlock, I’m not going to have you over for coffee at 3 in the morning.”

“My place then. Be there in half an hour”

He hung up.

She had half a mind to throw the phone.

Nearly all of her mind was determined to march straight to her bedroom and forget this whole poor excuse for a conversation. 

She was already so tired at it was. 

She didn’t have any time to go traipsing over to 221 B at this time of night.

Molly put her phone away, in her bag. 

She picked up her keys. 

She pulled her lab coat off the kitchen chair. 

And she made certain the cat was fed before she turned off all the lights, locked her door behind her, and headed to her car. 

Masochism didn’t suit her.

But apparently it was all she knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Brits don't say "ass", but it just doesn't feel as coarse with an 'r' in it.


	10. Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock brings up the Bible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: discussion of incest, and weird non-canon biz

The door announced his entrance with a hideous creak, informing him of the fact that this cell had only recently been refurnished into presenting a marginally hospitable environment for a human being. 

Other evidence manifested itself in the scarring on the stone floors and the slits in the wall that were meant to pass for windows. Said slits provided glaring, over-focused bits of sun designed more for easy observation of the inmate within the cell rather than the inmate’s benefit. 

His mother’s money hadn’t gone to much it seemed. 

A bed was present, bolted to both the floor and the wall. 

A closed privy and basin (also well-secured to the walls) comprised the decor of the other end of the room.

She sat in the corner, in one of the only parts of the room that accumulated shadow.

She sat cross-legged with her back to him, garbed in white linen, her dark hair loosely curling at her waist.

The whiteness of her clothing and the lack of tangles in her hair told him that she was frequently cleaned and groomed in some other location. 

The lack of animal smell or filth was evidence that her cell was often sanitized, bed stripped and floor and walls scrubbed.

The rare rat with a cage as sterile as the lab-

The guards closed the door behind him, but he knew they still watched and listened thru the slits in the metal door. 

He came just a little closer to the center of the cell before he sat on the cold floor, imitating her posture. 

Minutes bloomed into ages there.

He let the silence grow thick between them, pretending to be content to watch the dust float in sunbeams. 

He pretended that his heart was beating regularly and that his palms weren’t sweating. 

He pretended that he didn’t dread her hollow, endless stare; eyes that had followed him in every room, constantly examining and calculating in an eternal experiment-

But she had asked him here. 

Neither Mycroft nor the governor was stupid enough to give her a plaything for longer than ten minutes. 

And he knew no matter how he dreaded it, his nature wouldn’t permit him to leave with unanswered questions, not without constant mental torment. 

Curiosity had always been his weakness. 

He was going to have to break the silence. 

She was forcing him to.

She was always in control, even in a cage.

“Talk”

He said at last. 

He’d play her game for the five minutes he had left. 

She seemed to sense that even her whims were subject to the tyranny of time because she turned her body to face him. 

The shadows surrounding her did little to soften her gaze. 

She spent too long merely staring at him, as though she was reading his soul thru his eyes.

And there was that horrible familiar feeling again, less like simple exposure, more like vivisection. 

“Why” 

She broke the silence with a voice a bit softer than he remembered.

“What?”

“Why”

He leaned back slightly as though stretching his spine but his body was too tense to convince anyone he was relaxed. 

“Some would say God, others would say capitalism, but you must be more specific.”

Her mouth did something then; perhaps it was her version of a smile.

“You always were my favorite.”

She said.

He looked as though he was consciously resisting asking for an explanation. She continued despite him. 

“You were always so interesting”

“To experiment with-“

He charged. 

“To undo”

She interrupted.

“Like a knot in a shoestring”

She was almost sentimental in her inflection. 

Sherlock’s jaw tightened but he said nothing.

She had always been able to do that to him, rob him of anything to say.

Mycroft had oft played the psychoanalyst (when he was feeling particularly impish), suggesting more than once that Sherlock used words as a defense tactic, talking over and more quickly than others as a bulwark against their innate malice and stupidity.

But here with Eurus talk didn’t work. 

To give words was to give weapons. 

Yet today she seemed willing to craft her own artillery, as she didn’t wait for his response.

“That’s why I asked for you”

She moved closer to him.

“To ‘undo’ me again?”

He wasn’t going to give ground. He let her come closer. 

“Mycroft says you’re getting married.”

Sherlock suddenly was quite aware of the cold clinging to the room. 

“Why would he tell you that?”

His voice remained even. 

“I have ways of wringing things out of him”

She commented.

“But you are getting married”

She moved closer again. 

“To Molly Hooper”

Maybe he should move back. 

“I remember her”

Damn it, where were the guards?

“I just have one question”

Sherlock was sure that if he were a wiser man he would have stood and bolted, banged on the door and screamed to get out. 

But he wasn’t a very wise man. In fact, he was remarkably stupid.

He was a little fly irreversibly drawn to the honey.

And Eurus was the spider.

“Why”

She repeated again, her face close enough to his that he could feel her breath on his skin. 

“Ask our mother”

“No”

She smiled with the same condescension she’d give a dog.

“I know why Mummy would. She thinks a woman could control you, release all that pent up frustration”

She was almost imitating their mother’s boundlessly self-assured tone. 

“I want to know why you would obey her”

Sherlock did meet Eurus’ gaze, but for a long moment he wasn’t looking at her. 

The dust in the sunbeams served as a barrier between them.

“Do you even know?”

She queried. 

“Perhaps she’s right.”

He said.

“Perhaps I’m just a dog that needs a handler”

He took this opportunity to lean back, put distance between them.

She didn’t look convinced. 

She really shouldn’t be; such a concession from her brother should only occur when the planets align. 

“You haven’t answered my question”

She stated, unimpressed.

“I think you don’t have an answer”

She added.

“I think my time is up”

He made to stand but she caught his wrist.

“It certainly is, but I doubt in the way you expect”

She said, refusing to relent on her grip. 

He let himself stare at her.

“I’ve heard enough of your riddles to know they don’t mean anything”

He stated.

That was a lie, of course.

She knew it was. 

“I’ll make sure to speak slowly so you understand”

She consoled. 

“I’m leaving”

He told her, but he didn’t pull his wrist from her fingers. 

“Why are you marrying her?”

She repeated. 

“I don’t know”

“Then why do it?”

“Why does it matter?”

He returned. 

She looked at him with something strange in her eyes. 

“I’ve told you."

“You didn’t speak slowly enough”

“No, you just weren’t listening”

“Then it seems to bear repeating”

Her breathing changed, just slightly, but it was a detail that unnerved him. 

That strange something he’d glimpsed before was back in her eyes, giving his midbrain ample reason to run. 

He should listen to his midbrain more often. 

“I told you”

She drew closer once more.

“You were always my favorite”

She reached out to move his hair away from his eyes. 

Her hand opened on his wrist, catching his fingers with her own. 

His heart beat in his ears.

Why was she leaning forward?

“N-No”

He pulled her other hand away from his face. 

“Why?”

She challenged, tilting her head.

“Need I remind you that we share both parents?”

“And why does that matter?”

She was halfway to her knees, using the leverage to lean further forward.

“Think of the children”

He said, pushing her back down. 

Where the hell were the guards?

“Who said anything about children?”

His time in here should have been long up.

“Although I have been thinking that having a child might be interesting”

She confessed.

“A deformed one could be especially entertaining”

He released her to try to regain his full height and she followed him. 

“Why not, Sherlock?”

Her fingers grasped at the buttons of his collar. 

“Leviticus”

He pulled her hands down to her sides before he started toward the door. 

“Open the door”

He commanded, praying to God Almighty that the guards were there to hear him. 

His prayers were answered, and he could only wonder why they hadn’t been answered sooner. 

He was beyond the threshold and intent on not looking back, but in spite of himself he could hear what she said to the hollow room before the door shut.

"You were my favorite"

He couldn't help but ask loudly enough for her to hear:

"Why"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, incest is bad because it greatly increases the incidence of unfortunate recessive alleles in a population, but that's not common knowledge in this particular decade, so they just have to stick with Leviticus.
> 
>  This chapter is subject to rewrite. 
> 
> (Also, I'm not purporting any of this as canon =P)


	11. Over the Threshold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft secretly likes goldfish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: liberties taken with geography and general locality

The morning was especially bright and clear, a collage of budding trees and wildflowers. Few clouds but fringes of cirrus stood between the inhabitants of the glade and the hollow blue of the sky.

The whole of the countryside seemed laden with life. 

Which, to the line of black figures journeying the thin country road, seemed completely inappropriate-

The hearse creaked under the weight of the black oak coffin of Mrs. Elizabeth Holmes.

No expense had been spared where the containment of the corpse was concerned, meaning Mycroft had to give a little on the expense of the transportation. 

However, the assembled mourners were fully apt to walk the quarter mile from the church to the Holmes burial plot at Musgrave. 

In a sense, the trip served dual purposes: the deposition of Mycroft’s mother in the earth, and the deposition of his brother at the new couple’s intended residence. 

Both were trials of loss, but also relief. 

For despite the stalwart familial loyalty buried deep in Mycroft’s soul, he could not say he had ever enjoyed the company of either his mother or brother. 

Seeing them go would cause no long-term wounds. 

Thus, he was solemn but not particularly sad to join his brother and uncles in lifting the coffin from the hearse and carefully aligning it with the freshly dug grave. 

The gravediggers fastened the straps around the casket and helped the other men lower it into the ground. 

“And the dead shall be raised incorruptible”

Mycroft’s limbs strained under the weight, the straps cutting into his palms. 

“Where O death is thy victory?”

He held on even when the casket reached the bottom, watching the women and children cast their wildflower bouquets onto the ebony black of the coffin.

“Where o death is thy sting?”

Such a deep black-  
Like a void-

Uncle Rudy was the first to cast dirt into the grave. All the uncles followed suit, but Mycroft seemed to be unable to let go of the straps. 

Uncle James gently pried the strap from Mycroft’s grip and helped the grave diggers pull them out from the grave.

“Come on then” he whispered to his nephew, handing the eldest Holmes son a shovel. 

Mycroft finally got a grip on himself, slowly scooping the earth into the hole, until the casket disappeared under dirt and grass. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the still figure of Sherlock, shovel in hand, but making no move to assist the burial process.

The group of men got along well enough without him. 

When there was nothing left to fill, they all stood back for the final words of the presbyter, a man whose presence here was-in Mycroft’s opinion-a mere formality.

“But thanks be to God who giveth us victory thru our Lord Jesus Christ”

He supposed humans needed comfort in the face of death.

“Foreasmuch ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord”

Some cohesive force to keep society from splitting in the face of mortality-

For the curse of the human animal was awareness of the inevitability of death…

“In the name of the Father, the Son”

Let them have their comforts. 

“And the Holy Ghost”

It was better to have false comfort than to remain conscious of the inescapable void that awaited them all. 

“Amen”

Eternity was for the universe, not for the individual.

But occasionally kindness was in order, and despite the opinion of most in his circle, Mycroft did know how to be kind.

However, Mycroft could only think-as he glanced at his brother and the timid, diminutive figure of his brother’s new bride standing behind him-there were only so many situations kindness could help. 

He didn’t know if he could be called a moral man for leaving this mouse of a girl alone with his sibling; she was almost certainly condemned to becoming the object of incessant criticism or just plain ignored. 

She had whatever Mycroft could summon of his sympathies, but assistance he could not give. 

She had to fend for herself or importune her God. 

Mycroft could not come between man and wife.

Whether that man was more of a man or a petulant adolescent unfortunately made little difference.

He pulled himself from his mother’s grave to join his sibling and sister-in-law, both of whom remained too transfixed by the grave to notice him until he spoke.

“Personal belongings have already been moved inside; I trust you can handle their proper placement. I had nothing unpacked out of respect for Sherlock’s particularities.” 

“Everything is fine”

Sherlock said to the empty space beside Mycroft.

Mycroft obliged his brother’s mood and continued his address in Molly’s direction.

“Your husband has ardently entreated me to not install permanent staff; instead help will arrive every Monday and Thursday to keep you from endless toil or disarray. The cooking situation is yet to be dealt with.”

“T-that’s fine. I can take of it” 

Molly once again attempted a confidence she was far from possessing.

Mycroft raised his eyebrows but did nothing but gesture the pair towards the manor, a trek Sherlock had already begun. 

The path to the entrance had always appeared particularly singular to the few guests Musgrave had ever received, being flanked with gravestones rather than shrubbery. 

The sight was immediately to Molly’s liking. Her hours in the plot of St. Peregrines would be up for recreation in her own front yard. 

The inside of the manor seemed cluttered in its structure, making already dim rooms even more starved of light. 

Molly took a moment in the entryway to examine the debating symmetries between stairways and walls.

To her right she glimpsed shelves of books thru an open door. 

The library would serve as her second oasis. 

“You have access to quite a collection”

Mycroft remarked when he noticed his new sister’s attention lingering on the athenaeum.

“The Holmes family was always a mite eccentric, so you’ll find plenty of the eldritch and arcane”

“And if you want to avoid the superstition and childish ramblings of ancient idiots altogether, you’ll ignore the whole of it. Lucretius is by far the worst offender.”

Sherlock interjected with a smile that evaded his eyes. 

He brusquely picked up his luggage-a large black chest encasing the faint clinking of glass, and a leather bag containing the normal kind of personal belongings-and proceeded thru a narrow door.

“I will be long. I won’t need dinner. Don’t wait up.”

He called over his shoulder as he descended to what was seemingly a cellar (oddly placed near the front of the house).

Molly was left like an island in the Atlantic.

Mycroft felt that all his mild concerns for the girl had manifested in that moment. 

Her life would be confined to these silent halls, chained to a man with the mind of a machine and the orphan heart of a spoiled child. 

Again a tug of sympathy that would have to mean nothing-

“Do you require assis-“

He started to reach for her luggage, but she took the handles of both cases before he could.

“I can manage”

She smiled to be convincing.

“Which room is mine?”

“Up the stairs, at the end of the main hall on the left”

“Thank you”

She started up the stairs with the same smile still on her face.

“For everything”

For nothing

Mycroft thought as he exited thru the main entryway, letting the doors close behind him with a sound that echoed in the empty halls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not trying to imply that there are not numerous islands in the Atlantic, just that they're a bit more askew and spaced apart than many Pacific Islands imo, that's all.


	12. Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Molly get somewhat domestic.

When Molly was an undergraduate, her introductory chemistry classes had drilled into her mind that the universe tended toward disorder.

Of course, she knew that was a drastic simplification made for Biologists and Pre-meds to swallow, but she had always privately felt that Sherlock Holmes was the spiritual embodiment of that concept.

He could certainly deceive the masses who’s lives merely brushed his, don a remarkably convincing exterior of meticulous logic; impersonate a microprocessor.

Yet she’d seen (or, he’d shown?), too much of himself for her to believe that charade.

While he played the monolith, she knew his mind was overrun with eternally and violently diverging thoughts, always colliding and comparing and consuming.

Nothing was static, nothing was certain, and nothing was trusted.

That was the real Sherlock Holmes. A veneer of confidence to sheathe the roiling conflict-

Such instability had two inevitable results: either he would snap, or he would open just enough for something-maybe even someone-to help brace the storm.

She couldn’t deny the very private and personal desire to be involved in the latter.

However, when she reached his flat at 3:30 on a Monday morning, the former option seemed to be the most viable reality.

The sight before her was something that simply would not have manifested had John Watson remained a resident at 221 B.

Paper had seemingly replaced the carpet.

Books were either open across the couch and table and chairs or stacked in variable enough configurations to inspire a Dali painting.

And laptops-a stupid number of laptops-claimed the rest of the flat surfaces.

All of this, and the smell of coffee too…

Well, that settled it. She wasn’t dreaming; Molly never smelled anything in her dreams.

“Molly”

She looked up to see Sherlock Holmes offering her a porcelain cup of coffee complete with saucer and spoon.

_I might still be hallucinating though._

“Molly-“

Oh-

She mechanically raised two hands to receive the cup.

“Thank you”

She said to the liquid.

“Um, where should I sit”

She queried with a glance at the display of entropy that was his living room.

“Ah”

He seemed to notice his flat for the first time.

“I can put some of this over here”

He said, removing stacks of books from the chairs by the fireplace and joining them to stacks of books on the coffee table.

He shoveled some of the paper off the floor and onto the table and gestured towards the seat opposite his.

“Isn’t that John’s seat?”

She felt stupid for asking it.

“Well obviously he isn’t here Molly”

She sat without another word.

After a few seconds she realized she still had her purse on her arm and her coffee awkwardly perched on both hands and set about rearranging herself into something more natural.

Apparently he remembered she liked cream and no sugar. Of course he did-

She stole a glance at him sitting down in his usual chair with his own cup of black coffee; black with two sugars no doubt.

Despite being in the middle of the night, this was probably the most domestic, unapologetically normal scene they had ever had between them in the seven years of their acquaintance.

In Molly’s mind, this only compounded her sentiment that something was starkly and deeply wrong.

Why the hell was she here?

Perhaps this was some silly test, and she was meant to infer the reason from the details present.

Well, if she’d indulged him enough to haul her sleep-deprived body over here even with a shift in less than three hours, she might as well continue playing his stupid games.

His hair hadn’t been washed for two days.

His shirt was mostly tucked in, but looser than usual.

The second to top button was also undone, exposing his neck and collar bone in a way that made her wish she could remove his shirt altogether.

She really should have just gone to bed.

The hollows of his eyes were darker than normal, and a tautness was present in in his face and neck.

And the hands that held his cup trembled just so slightly…

A lump formed in her throat.

Idiot man-

Stupid, stupid man-

He was using again.

He was using again, and this time there had been no one there to save him from himself.

That’s why she was here.

She was his last-ditch survival strategy.

Again-

She had only wished she could have become something a little more than that to him.

The rapidly descending train of thought combined with sleep deprivation produced the slightest tremble in her limbs.

She was not entirely certain why she shouldn’t set her cup down and leave his flat this instant.

She knew how this would go.

He would come to her in his time of need, playing on all the stupidity and weakness he so clearly saw in her.

She’d help him out of some moral heroism that served to thinly veil her hollow desperation for a sense of worth and value.

He’d thank her in some vague empty way and get on with his life, leaving her tripping over the ruse of whatever connection she’d hoped for between them.

And over again…

She’d act to the same script; variation only in the painted set behind her.

 _Molly Hooper: Desperation Incarnate_ might be a hard title to sell but she always seemed to garner enough of an audience.

Perhaps the finale was in order.

Perhaps setting down her cup, pulling her purse strap onto her shoulder, and heading for the door was just the right ending.

“Molly”

Molly looked back at the man still seated, only then realizing just how far her thoughts had translated into reality.

Her hand was already on the doorknob.

“Where are you going?”

Molly knew she should probably exit while she still had the will to do so, before he talked her out of her resolution, like he always managed to do.

She should leave right now.

“I’m just so tired of this, Sherlock”

No, shit, this wasn’t the time for emotional honesty. No time with him would ever be time for emotional honesty.

“Tired of what? What are you-“

“This”

She almost jerked her arm in his direction.

“You”

Please Molly, stop.

“You always come to us with the problems you refuse to fix.”

Words were pouring out of her in a torrent, and she was scared to stay but unable to leave.

“I can’t fix this” She gestured towards his still slightly trembling hands.

“And you won’t”

She was too angry to cry, but too sad to scream.

“So, I’m doing the only logical thing, and leaving”

She turned back towards the door as a clap of thunder resounded above the ceiling.

Gusts of rain followed, coating the windows.

Molly didn’t believe in fate, but she might have a case for the devil.

“You might wait to drive until the storm stops Molly; you are clearly distressed, and your peripheral vision is lacking already”

Molly’s hand clenched the doorknob harder.

She really could just walk out, rain be damned.

She could at least make it to her car.

Call a cab-

Run downstairs and barge in on Mrs. Hudson.

Anything to not be here-

“Molly”

It was better to break the doorknob than obey her impulse to stab Sherlock Holmes.

Although she might finally be able to get something through his titanium skull.

She snickered a little.

She’d like to see him solve that case.

God knows he never would.

“Molly?”

Acting like a human being and shutting up were two things of which the great Sherlock Holmes was seemingly incapable.

Molly finally relented her death grip on the door knob and mechanically resumed her seat across from her prospective murder victim.

The man in question appeared content with her action and continued to pay attention to his cup.

For a good minute, the clinking of china cups and spoons was the only real sound above the rain.

Rather without warning, Molly set her cup down on the paper-ridden table with more than a clink.

“Why am I here Sherlock?”

He continued stirring his drink.

“I thought that was obvious.”

Molly sighed thru her nose.

“I’m not here for coffee Sherlock. Even you don’t do things like this”

He didn’t answer.

He always had an answer.

“Where were you when I called you?”

She asked, her voice nearly fading to a whisper.

“That-“

He suddenly sat up straighter, joining his cup with Molly’s on the table.

There was no sign of the tremor in his limbs or fatigue in his eyes as he leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin on folded hands.

“Are you accustomed to premonitions Molly?”

The question trudged thru Molly’s mind, failing to grasp any relevance to the situation at hand (which was Sherlock being an ass).

“I, what do you mean?”

Sherlock’s eyes had rapidly reclaimed their light.

“What made you call me at three in the morning, mere hours before you were due for work?”

She shook her head.

“I guess, I had a thought-“

“No, you didn’t. You’ve been fatigued for several days. You switched from nights to mornings last week. You’ve skipped your shower for two days and laundry for three. You’ve even forgone the minimal amount of concealer you usually apply to the bags under your eyes. You’ve indulged in the cafeteria food four times in the last two days despite your attempts to keep your diet-“

“That really means nothing Sherlock”

“It does. Why would you think of me at 3:00 in the morning? You’re a creature of habit, Molly-“

“I do that quite a lot actually-”

Molly nearly bit her tongue, wishing for all the world she wasn’t in a chair opposite the world’s only consulting detective.

She didn’t need him to humiliate her. She seemed to be doing a bang-up job of that herself.

She felt her cheeks betray her embarrassment.

Well, what’s done is done.

Cat’s out of the bag and parading around the room.

She’d have to live with that.

And she couldn’t deny that she just slightly enjoyed his failure to compute her sentence.

Very few moments of her life would entertain the scene of Sherlock at a loss for words, and she’d marvel at them no matter how fleeting.

“But you’d never act on that-“

And the moment was gone…

“Wouldn’t I?”

She was apparently hell-bent on making this worse for herself.

“Obviously”

“Why?”

“Because you know better. “

Molly felt her heart jerk a little.

“You’ve always known better than to-“

_Love me_

Were the words he didn’t say.

_But I really don’t, do I?_

But luckily for her she had enough prudence to not say that out loud.

“So maybe I did have a premonition of some kind. I have before. I’ve never acted on that either.”

“Which is all the more significant that today you disobeyed your every natural reservation; and it still leaves the question: why?”

Molly was abruptly captivated by her coffee cup once more.

“Why was this one so important?”

Molly set down her cup again.

She had to leave for work in less than two hours.

“Because,”

She wasn’t getting out of this anyway.

“Because I thought you needed help.”

She wouldn’t be able to avoid him if she left now anyway.

“And that no one else would know to help you.”

Silence once again was the melody over the rhythm of the rain.

“Fascinating”

Sherlock broke the spell when he stood and fell into his usual pacing pattern (prayer hands and all) across an unusually paper-covered floor.

“H-how?”

Sherlock did not deign to answer, as he was ostensibly still making to oblations to the God of his intellect.

“Movement of the web”

He said when he’d at last returned to the center of the room.

“Intersecting threads” He said in a much lower voice, his eyes yet fettered to some invisible dimension.

The tremor had returned to his limbs, and the dullness to his gaze.

“Sherlock?”

Molly couldn’t help the quaver of concern in her voice.

“But it doesn’t-“

His spine was curving like he was falling forward.

“Make any sense-“

The rest of his body followed his spine, and Sherlock Holmes collapsed on the floor of 221 B Baker St., unable to respond to his name no matter how many times or how anxiously Molly said it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone got any pointers for writing Sherlock Holmes? His speech patterns are weird. 
> 
> And I know entropy isn't actually disorder, but it sounds nice.


	13. In the Morgue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is quite blind in some ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: murder and mutilation discussed

 

The change of seasons often marked the change of tides for John Watson. Few notable occurrences seemed to transpire in succession.

 

There was always a lull before the storm; time in the eye of the spiral before the gale resumed.

 

It had been this way his whole life.

 

He was almost trained by it.

 

Like God recognized that he was a creature of habit, and thus would like his calamities with a definable rhythm-

 

This was probably why whenever he found his life remarkably at peace for any length of time, he walked the edge of the season with an air of anticipation.

 

Courting danger and disruption as an old friend who could be relied upon to visit when the months grew long…

 

And this was probably why he deviated from his regular path to the station one bitter December night, choosing to turn right instead of left, and trek a very familiar walkway to 221 Baker Street.

 

The reek of tobacco confirmed that the resident he sought was indeed home, and he remembered to neither ring nor knock before entering the smoke-filled flat.

 

He found Sherlock Holmes bent over his microscope, an array of fungi and fastidiously organized slides before him.

 

“Not your usual area of inquiry, Holmes”

 

Watson remarked as he set down his hat and coat on his former chair of choice.

 

“Claviceps Purpurea”

 

The man addressed replied as if that was all the greeting his closest friend deserved after four months of absence.

 

“Quite a history that one”

 

The doctor responded, lighting his own pipe to add more tobacco to the room.

 

“Indeed; it seems to be making itself a name again”

 

“Murder or sabotage?”

 

“Seemingly both”

 

Holmes replied, regaining his full height.

 

Watson heard an even tread on the stairway outside their door.

 

“Lestrade”

 

Holmes called without turning from his work.

 

The chief inspector manifested in the doorway.

 

“Another one?”

 

Holmes inquired, fitting another slide onto the stage.

 

“Different; dismembered man”

 

“So not connected then?”

 

Watson commented.

 

“The first was a woman and newborn found dead in their home-“

 

“No need to recount the entire event Lestrade; Watson is well-accustomed to lagging behind”

 

Watson briefly wondered why he’d missed all this while Lestrade joined Holmes in the kitchen.

 

“Dr. Joseph B. Hammond; prominent physician; found cut in pieces in his surgery”

 

Lestrade fumbled open the dossier, evidence of the bitter cold outside still in his limbs.

 

Sherlock deftly retrieved the crude sketch of the corpse from under the medical report.

 

“Enemies?”

 

“None known; lived with his sister until she married; never married himself; no other living family in record”

 

“And where is this sister now?”

 

John queried.

 

“Still undergoing the autopsy I presume”

 

Holmes answered.

 

“Leads?”

“A few colleagues; very private, no known friends; polite acquaintance with his neighbors”

 

“And I’m sure Scotland Yard has done everything in their power to destroy what evidence remained in the surgery. I’ll need to see the body.”

 

Sherlock swiftly cleansed his hands before donning his coat.

 

“Quite a vengeful death this one”

 

John remarked, glancing at the sketch of the body.

 

“What’s this circle by the knees meant to be?”

 

Lestrade looked over the doctor’s shoulder.

 

“I’m afraid no artists were at the scene; Anderson made do. Apparently, the killer removed the victim’s testicles post-mortem.”

 

“Ah-“

 

John reflexively dropped the sketch back in the dossier.

 

“More than enough information to go on”

 

Sherlock remarked with a wry smirk before quitting the flat.

 

*******

“Just once Lestrade, I wish your men would leave the body intact until I arrive”

 

Sherlock made no effort to lower his voice even descending into the morgue.

 

“Says the amateur”

 

Anderson said at the other end of the slab that supported the mutilated victim.

 

“The reports, Anderson”

 

Lestrade interjected.

 

“I can’t work with him; get me someone else”

 

Holmes demanded.

 

“You met the new man?”

 

Lestrade inquired.

 

“Anyone else”

 

Sherlock said.

 

“Alright, we’ll get the new one. Just don’t try any deductions on him and he might not hate you”

 

Lestrade reassured him, making his way to the back of the morgue.

 

“Dr. Holmes, would you join us over here please”

 

“Common name; relative of yours?”

 

Anderson poised the query in Sherlock’s direction as he let the reports fall on the adjacent table with more noise than necessary.

 

A diminutive figure at the other end of the morgue turned from the open corpse of the late Dr. Hammond’s sister. Blood was smeared all over his arms and flecked on his rolled sleeves, and his face was partially obfuscated by the brim of his hat.

 

“P-pardon?”

 

“Our private consultant is here to see Hammond, and he won’t work with Anderson”

 

That was the full sum of information Lestrade would bother with before leading the small pathologist to the aforementioned consultant.

 

“There we are; comfortable now?”

 

Lestrade asked Sherlock.

 

“My degree of comfort is inversely proportional to the number of imbeciles in the room”

 

Sherlock hadn’t waited for Lestrade to return before harnessing the lamplight and his looking glass in pursuit of the contents of the dead man’s nail beds.

 

“Evidently not a proponent of germ theory”

 

The high soft voice of the pathologist sounded above the bent detective.

 

“All the better to see him with”

 

Holmes remarked, taking a fingernail sample.

 

“If you’re thinking ergot again, there is no obvious evidence in the feces or remaining urine; only known cause of death was the severing of the external carotid arteries, followed by castration”

 

Sherlock moved from examining the neck to examining the head.

 

“Death of a child”

 

Sherlock mumbled.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Bruising on the brow suggestive of forceps; large forceps; probably obstetric in nature”

 

He returned to the neck and pursued the carnage to the knees.

 

“This was clearly retribution for the most animal of crimes”

 

Sherlock said as he straightened and put away his tools.

 

“So you’ve solved it then?”

 

Lestrade asked.

 

“A visit to the late doctor’s surgery should be all that is required to confirm my hypotheses, but the evidence is fairly obvious”

 

Sherlock confirmed as he proved his own acceptance of germ theory by rinsing his hands.

 

“Another unpunished brute who’s sins finally caught up with him-“

 

Sherlock began, but he had the supreme misfortune to look up the moment the lamplight overcame the shadows surrounding the new pathologist’s face.

 

And he found himself transfixed by a painfully familiar pair of large eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, it's really hard to figure out what 19th century forensics looked like when most of my scientific knowledge relies on discoveries made within the last 70-5 years


End file.
